During her heyday, Heidi Fleiss, now 42, was known as the Hollywood Madam. The daughter of a prominent Hollywood pediatrician (convicted of money laundering in connection with Heidi's sex ring, he was sentenced to one day in prison, three years of probation, and 625 hours of community service), at the age of 22, she went to work for Madame Alex, a well-known Hollywood brothel owner.
Fleiss said, "When I met her, I was like, 'Whoa.' You expect a madam to be this really elegant figure and here's this five-foot-three bald-headed Filipino woman in a see-through muumuu."
Under Heidi's management, Madame Alex's business boomed, going from $50,000 a month to $300,000. Then Fleiss branched out with her own call-girl service and had similar success.
Fleiss was first arrested in 1993 during an undercover sting operation. Her client list quickly became a Hollywood scandal waiting to erupt, but she never publicly revealed the names of her customers. According to Heidi's self-published book, Pandering, the names of only two famous clients were aired during her court hearings: actor Charlie Sheen and Texas billionaire businessman Robert T. Crow.
Fleiss was convicted on federal charges of conspiracy, tax evasion, and money laundering. She was sentenced to 37 months in prison and served 21. As part of a plea bargain, she also served a concurrent 18-month state sentence for attempted pandering.
Her life in the public eye continued after her release. In 1995, a documentary, Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam, was released. She's also the author of The Player's Handbook and she produced a DVD, Sex Tips, with her friend Victoria Sellers (daughter of Peter Sellers and Britt Eckland, who's been called "one of Hollywood's most notorious party animals").
In 2003, Fleiss accused her ex-boyfriend, actor Tom Sizemore, of domestic violence; Sizemore was convicted by a California jury and sentenced to 17 months in jail and four months in drug treatment.
In 2004, she sold the rights to her story to Paramount Studios for $5 million. She also opened a West Hollywood boutique called Hollywood Madam.
In January 2006, we reported that Heidi Fleiss had moved from Beverly Hills to Pahrump with plans to open a male brothel, dubbed Heidi's Stud Farm, with 20 men and a flat-fee charge of $250 an hour -- it would be Nevada's first legal brothel that catered exclusively to women clients. She owns 60 acres in Crystal, a tiny brothel settlement 20 miles north of Pahrump, where, according to a recent article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, she plans to build her Stud Farm. She says she'll submit an application within the next three months.
Meanwhile, Fleiss has opened a laundromat in Pahrump called Dirty Laundry. And she's become something of a bird collector, with 25 macaws nesting in her rented two-bedroom house.
